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War Crimes - use of torture

October 26, 2009

This article, by William Fisher, was posted to ipsnews.net, October 26, 2009

NEW YORK, Oct 26 (IPS) - The fifteenth anniversary of the U.S. ratification of the United Nations Convention Against Torture passed last week with little fanfare and virtually no press attention from the mainstream media here.
But according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), "U.S. policy continues to fall short of ensuring full compliance with the treaty."
For example, the organisation said that an appendix to the Army Field Manual (AFM) can still facilitate cruel treatment of prisoners and detainees at home and abroad.
The Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment (CAT) is the most comprehensive international human rights treaty dealing exclusively with the issues of torture and abuse. It came into effect in 1987, and has been ratified by 146 countries.
The treaty was initially signed by the Ronald Reagan administration in 1988 and was ratified by the Senate on Oct. 21, 1994, but with reservations, understandings and declarations (RUDs) that failed to make the treaty fully applicable.
The administration of former President George W. Bush exploited these RUDs to justify abusive interrogation policies, including the use of waterboarding, stress positions, extreme isolation and sleep deprivation.
In 2006, the Committee Against Torture, which reviews country compliance with CAT, criticised the U.S. for failure to uphold the treaty and called for full compliance.
After taking office, President Barack Obama issued an executive order prohibiting torture. But under an appendix to the 2006 revised U.S. Army Field Manual – the most recent edition – practices considered incompatible with CAT and international law are still allowed. These include force-feeding, psychological torture, sleep and sensory deprivation.
And under Appendix M to the AFM, detainees can be "separated" or held in isolation from other detainees for 30 days, or longer with authorisation, and allowed only four hours of continuous sleep per night over 30 days, which can be prolonged upon approval.
Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU Human Rights Programme, told IPS, "The president's first nine months in office have signaled a policy shift on human rights and commitment to the rule of law. Certainly his speech to the U.N. and his Nobel Peace Prize have raised the bar of expectation as to his commitment to advancing human rights at home and abroad."
But, he added, "There is still much more to do, including honouring and expanding U.S. human rights commitments and fully incorporating them into domestic policy. U.S. credibility abroad and commitment to human rights at home will be judged by deeds, not by words."
"What is needed now is taking concrete actions to translate these commitments to a robust human rights policy. A new presidential executive order to reconstitute the Inter-Agency Working on Human Rights would be an important step forward," Dakwar said.
"To fulfill its human rights requirements, the administration must also fully investigate crimes of torture committed in violation of U.S. and international law and withdraw the Army Field Manual's Appendix M," he added.
Since his inauguration, President Obama has helped restore U.S. standing on human rights by issuing executive orders to close the Guantánamo detention centre, prohibiting CIA prisons and enforcing the ban on torture, joining the U.N. Human Rights Council, signing the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), and prioritising the ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).
While welcoming these steps, the ACLU is calling for additional concrete measures to reassert U.S. leadership on human rights, including the full investigation of torture crimes, abandoning the Guantánamo military commissions and renouncing the practice of holding detainees indefinitely without charge or trial.
The ACLU's Dakwar told IPS that he "expected the administration to announce concrete plans to implement and enforce ratified human rights treaties and the resurrection of the Interagency Working Group on Human Rights - disbanded during the Bush administration - to coordinate and promote human rights within domestic policy."
He said, "There is hope and expectation within the human rights community that the president will make the announcement on resurrection of the Inter-Agency Working Group on Human Rights as soon as Dec. 10 – international human rights day and the day he will be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize."
He noted that shortly after the U.S. elections, the ACLU and more than 50 U.S.-based human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and social justice organisations launched the Campaign for a New Domestic Human Rights Agenda, which identified concrete goals for pushing the administration and Congress to strengthen the U.S.'s commitment to human rights at home.
The campaign have four primary objectives. First is re-creation of the Interagency Working Group on Human Rights, first initiated in 1998 by President Clinton through an executive order, but effectively disbanded by the Bush administration in 2001. The call is for a new executive order to be issued with an improved and strengthened mandate.
Second is transformation of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission into a U.S. Civil and Human Rights Commission. The current commission was created in the 1950s with the mandate of monitoring and enforcing compliance with U.S. civil rights law.
In recent years, it has grown dysfunctional and been largely discredited. Currently there is a push to re-form the commission. The Leadership Conference for Civil Rights has taken the lead on the reform effort, and, along with the Campaign, has called for a new commission with a mandate to monitor the U.S.'s compliance with its human rights (as well as civil rights) commitments.
Third is implementation of recommendations by the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) and to create a plan of action to enforce them at the domestic level.
Lastly, the Campaign is calling for implementation and coordination of human rights on the state and local level, particularly in partnership with state and local human rights and civil rights commissions.

October 24, 2009

This press release was posted to the Center for Constitutional Rights Website, October 15, 2009

Today, attorneys filed an appeal before the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeal, in the case Dr. Trudy Bond v. Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists. Toledo-based psychologist Dr. Trudy Bond is calling on the Louisiana State Board of Examiners to investigate Louisiana psychologist and retired U.S. Army colonel Dr. Larry C. James, a former high-ranking advisor on interrogations for the U.S. military in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.
According to his own statements, Dr. James played an influential role in both the policy and day-to-day operations of interrogations and detention at the prison camps. Publicly-available information shows that while Dr. James was at Guantanamo, abuse in interrogations was widespread, and cruel and inhuman treatment was official policy.
Allegations of abuse during Dr. James’s January to May 2003 deployment include beatings, religious and sexual humiliation, rape threats and painful body positions. Canadian citizen Omar Khadr, who is still imprisoned in Guantanamo, is one of the prisoners who has alleged brutal treatment in the spring of 2003, when he was only 16 years old. James was also stationed in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison in 2004 and returned to Guantanamo in 2007. In 2008, he was named Dean of the School of Professional Psychology at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio.
In compliance with her ethical obligation to report abuse by other psychologists, in February 2008 Dr. Bond filed a complaint against Dr. James before the Board, the agency that issued and now regulates his psychology license. Dr. Bond alleged that Dr. James breached professional ethics by violating psychologists’ duties to do no harm, to protect confidential information and to obtain informed consent, and she called on the Board to investigate whether action should be taken against Dr. James.
As Chief Psychologist of the Joint Intelligence Group and a senior member of the Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) at Guantanamo, Dr. James had access to the confidential medical records of people he was charged with exploiting for intelligence. According to former Guantanamo interrogators, BSCTs used information from patients’ records to help interrogators increase the patients’ psychological duress, including by exploiting their fears. The very purpose of these mental health professional teams, the interrogators said, was to help “break” the prisoners. Dr. James denies that claim, but an extensive government paper trail supports the interrogators’ accounts.
The Board summarily refused to investigate Dr. Bond’s complaint, claiming that the statute of limitations had run, despite conclusive information to the contrary. Dr. Bond then filed suit against the Board in Louisiana’s 19th Judicial District Court, which in July 2009 dismissed her case without looking at the merits. Today’s brief before the First Circuit Court in Baton Rouge argues that the District Court should have reviewed the Board’s clearly wrong legal decision.
Said Dr. Bond, “The five psychologists on the Louisiana Board were given plenty of credible evidence, but they chose not to investigate the head intelligence psychologist of prison camps notorious for their use of psychological torture. I don’t think Louisiana lawmakers intended to give five fellow professionals total, unchecked power to make arbitrary decisions that deeply affect the public welfare.”
Said CCR Cooperating Attorney Deborah Popowski, “The Louisiana Board is fighting awfully hard to turn a blind eye to serious allegations of abuse. We wish the Board would devote its resources to investigating unethical conduct instead. Everyone, including the people of Louisiana, would be better served.”
For more information on the involvement of health professionals in torture and abuse visit the Center for Constitutional Rights website http://whenhealersharm.org.
CCR has led the legal battle over Guantanamo for the last six years – sending the first ever habeas attorney to the base and sending the first attorney to meet with a former CIA “ghost detainee” there. CCR has been responsible for organizing and coordinating more than 500 pro bono lawyers across the country in order to represent the men at Guantanamo, ensuring that nearly all have the option of legal representation. In addition, CCR has been working to resettle the approximately 60 men who remain at Guantánamo because they cannot return to their country of origin for fear of persecution and torture.

October 23, 2009

The following article, by Tom Andrews, was posted to the New Security Action Blog, October 22, 2009

Our campaign is taking off, and today we are thrilled that an incredible group of highly acclaimed musicians have signed onto the campaign. They are signing the open letter to Congress and asking you to join them. They include: Tom Morello, Billy Bragg, Michelle Branch, Jackson Browne, T-Bone Burnett, David Byrne, Rosanne Cash, Marc Cohn, Steve Earle, the Entrance Band, Joe Henry, Pearl Jam, Bonnie Raitt, R.E.M., Trent Reznor, Rise Against, The Roots.
Rosanne Cash told the Washington Post last night that she reacted with “absolute disgust” when she learned about the use of music as a means of torturing detainees at Guantanamo: “I think every musician should be involved. It seems so obvious. Music should never be used as torture.”
So, the list of musicians who are willing to stand up to close Guantanamo and end torture – including the music variety – could grow in the days and weeks to come. And, we are getting calls from some of them this afternoon wanting to do more. We’ll keep you posted.
Artists have joined on to political campaigns before, but this is slightly different. We know for a fact that the music of Rage Against the Machine (Tom’s band) and Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor) was used at Guantanamo – music played at near ear-splitting volumes for hours on end – to torture detainees. As you might expect, they are not happy about it. Here’s what Tom had to say:

Guantanamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured – from water boarding, to stripping, hooding and forcing detainees into humiliating sexual acts - playing music for 72 hours in a row at volumes just below that to shatter the eardrums. Guantanamo may be Dick Cheney’s idea of America, but it’s not mine. The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me – we need to end torture and close Guantanamo now.

You can check out what some of the other artists have gone on record saying here.
This group of musicians has launched a formal protest against the use of music used in conjunction with torture that took place at the prison and other detention facilities, and they’re taking their fight a step further . . . several have signed on to a Freedom of Information Act request to declassify all secret government records pertaining to how music was utilized as an interrogation device. If your life’s work were used to torture people, you’d want to know about it.
Join the nearly 20 musicians and add to the thousands of letters that have been sent to Congress demanding that we Close Guantanamo Now. Take Action today!

Tortured Law, a new 10-minute documentary by Alliance for Justice, examines the role U.S. lawyers played in authorizing torture. Join those calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to release the report of the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility, and hold accountable those who ordered, designed, and justified torture.
You can join the call by signing Alliance for Justice's petition: http://ga1.org/campaign/release_torture_memos
And by signing up to host a screening in your area: http://www.afj.org/films-and-programs/tortured-law/host-a-screening-tortured-law.html

October 19, 2009

This article, by Richard Norton-Taylor, was published in The Guardian, October 16, 2009

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, acted in a way that was harmful to the rule of law by suppressing evidence about what the government knew of the illegal treatment of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who was held in a secret prison in Pakistan, the high court has ruled.
In a devastating judgment, two senior judges roundly dismissed the foreign secretary's claims that disclosing the evidence would harm national security and threaten the UK's vital intelligence-sharing arrangements with the US.
In what they described as an "unprecedented" and "exceptional" case, to which the Guardian is a party, they ordered the release of a seven-paragraph summary of what the CIA told British officials – and maybe ministers – about Ethiopian-born Mohamed before he was secretly interrogated by an MI5 officer in 2002.
"The suppression of reports of wrongdoing by officials in circumstances which cannot in any way affect national security is inimical to the rule of law," Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones ruled. "Championing the rule of law, not subordinating it, is the cornerstone of democracy."
The summary is a CIA account given to British intelligence "whilst [Mohamed] was held in Pakistan ... prior to his interview by an officer of the Security Service", the judges said. The officer, known only as Witness B, is being investigated by the Metropolitan police for "possible criminal wrongdoing".
The seven-page document will not be released until the result of an appeal is known. However, the judges made clear their anger at the position adopted by Miliband, MI5, and MI6 in their hard-hitting judgment.
An explanation was needed, they said, about "what the United Kingdom government actually knew about what was alleged to be cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or torture, in particular what Witness B knew before he interviewed [Mohamed] ... in Pakistan". The judges added that it was important to explain what MI5 "and others knew when they provided further information to the United States to be used in the interrogation".
There was a "compelling public interest" to disclose what Miliband wanted to suppress, they said; there was nothing in the seven-paragraph summary that had anything remotely to do with "secret intelligence".
"In our view, as a court in the United Kingdom, a vital public interest requires, for reasons of democratic accountability and the rule of law in the United Kingdom, that a summary of the most important evidence relating to the involvement of the British security services in wrongdoing be placed in the public domain in the United Kingdom."
The judges sharply criticised the way Miliband and his lawyers tried to persuade the Obama administration to back the suppression of the CIA material. Lawyers acting for Mohamed, the Guardian and other media organisations pointed out that Obama had himself set up an inquiry into CIA practices and published details of their interrogation techniques.
In the end, Miliband had to rely for help on a CIA letter to MI6 claiming that disclosure of the document would harm the security of the US and UK.
The judges made it clear they did not believe the claim was credible. "The public interest in making the paragraphs public is overwhelming," they said.
The document would show what Witness B – an MI5 officer who interrogated Mohamed in Pakistan in 2002 – knew about Mohamed's condition before he questioned him incognito in a Pakistani jail, the judges said.
The CIA secretly flew Mohamed to Morocco, Afghanistan and then Guantánamo Bay, the court has heard. The judges criticised MI5 and MI6 for the belated disclosure of documents that revealed an MI5 officer was in Morocco when Mohamed was held there in a secret jail.
Miliband's lawyers continued to argue that a number of passages in the judges' ruling must be redacted as well as the seven-paragraph CIA document.
Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, admitted in a speech at Bristol University on Thursday that the Security Service had been "slow to detect the emerging pattern of US practice in the period after 9/11".
"But it is important to recognise that we do not control what other countries do, that operational decisions have to be taken with the knowledge available, even if it is incomplete, and that when the emerging pattern of US policy was detected, necessary improvements were made."
He repeated the mantra that MI5 "does not torture people, nor do we collude in torture or solicit others to torture people on our behalf".
However, he said the situation posed a dilemma. "Given the pressing need to understand and uncover al-Qaida's plans, were we to deal, however circumspectly, with those security services who had experience of working against al-Qaida on their own territory, or were we to refuse to deal with them, accepting that in so doing we would be cutting off a potentially vital source of information that would prevent attacks in the west?
"In my view we would have been derelict in our duty if we had not worked, circumspectly, with overseas liaisons who were in a position to provide intelligence that could safeguard this country from attack. I have every confidence in the behaviour of my officers in what were difficult and, at times, dangerous circumstances".

October 14, 2009

This articl;e, by Christopher Flavelle, was posted to Alternet, October 14, 2009.

A few weeks ago, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia released a declassified version of a judge’s ruling in the case of Al Rabiah, a Kuwaiti citizen who has been held at Guantanamo for seven years. The judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, found that the government could not credibly support its allegation that Al Rabiah was part of the Taliban or al-Qaida, and that the evidence against him wasn’t sufficient to justify his continued detention. She ordered the government to release Al Rabiah "forthwith."
But the judge’s opinion is more than a legal document; it’s also a window into the interrogation process at Guantanamo and the risk that "enhanced interrogation techniques" will produce false information. Excerpts from the opinion are below; you can also read the whole document.Al Rabiah’s background.
Kollar-Kotelly describes Al Rabiah as a 50-year-old father of four, who graduated from the Air Service Training school at Perth College, Scotland, with a degree in aviation maintenance in 1981. He then went to Kuwait Airways, where he worked until his detention in 2001. At the time Al Rabiah was captured, he was an overweight man in his 40s, with "various medical ailments such as high blood pressure and chronic pain in his neck and lower back]" and no military training, save for two weeks of compulsory training in the Kuwait Army until he was discharged for a knee injury.
Al Rabiah often used his vacations to perform humanitarian work in impoverished or war-torn countries, the judge writes, and it was to perform the same kind of work that he traveled to Afghanistan in October 2001—an explanation that Kollar-Kotelly writes is supported by the evidence. After he tried to leave the country via Iran, whose border guards denied him entry, Al Rabiah tried instead to cross the Pakistani border, but he was captured by villagers and turned over to the Americans, who later transferred him to Guantanamo.The government’s evidence against Al Rabiah was "surprisingly bare."
The government’s case against Al Rabiah initially rested on two main pillars: allegations made against him by fellow detainees and his own confessions. But in the judge’s opinion, neither held any weight.
The judge’s ruling cites four detainees who made allegations against Al Rabiah. The names of his accusers are redacted, as are the specifics of their allegations, but Kollar-Kotelly explains her reasons for rejecting them. The first accuser made statements that were incorrect; the second made statements that changed over time, and which the judge called "demonstrably false"; the third seems to have made statements about someone who was not Al Rabiah; and the fourth made his allegations only after one week of sleep deprivation, exceeding the military’s own guideline prohibiting sleep deprivation for more than four days, "and he did not repeat this allegation either before or after."
Kollar-Kotelly notes that the government itself "withdrew most of its reliance" on the witnesses against Al Rabiah during the course of the trial. She writes that their allegations are unreliable, writing, "the Court finds that none of the alleged eyewitnesses have provided credible allegations against Al Rabiah." However, she calls it "very significant that Al Rabiah’s interrogators apparently believed these allegations at the time they were made, and therefore sought to have Al Rabiah confess to them." That brings her to those confessions.Al Rabiah’s confessions were obtained only after his interrogators began using "aggressive interrogation tactics," at least one of which was apparently used without proper authorization.
Kollar-Kotelly found that Al Rabiah initially denied any involvement with al-Qaida, even after he was told that eyewitnesses had made allegations to the contrary. Al Rabiah’s confessions began only after his interrogators "began using more aggressive interrogation tactics."
At least one of those tactics "did not become authorized by the Secretary of Defense for use at Guantanamo until April 16, 2003." The techniques approved by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on that date included isolation, "dietary manipulation," "attacking or insulting the ego of a detainee" and "environmental manipulation," including "adjusting temperature or introducing an unpleasant smell."
Whatever tactic was initially used by Al Rabiah’s interrogators, they may have broken the Defense Department’s rules in applying it. The judge writes that at least one of the tactics used on Al Rabiah "could not be used on a detainee until ‘the SOUTHCOM Commander ma[de] a determination of ‘military necessity’ and notif[ied] the Secretary in advance’ of its use." According to the judge, "the Government was unable to produce any evidence that [REDACTED] obtained authorization to use the [REDACTED] technique," despite requests from the court to produce that evidence.
Kollar-Kotelly writes that Al Rabiah told the court that he made his confessions "to reduce the abuse meted out by his interrogators ‘to obtain confessions that suited what [they] thought they knew or what they wanted [him] to say.’" According to the judge, Al Rabiah "maintained his confessions over time because ‘the interrogators would continue to abuse [him] anytime [he] attempted to repudiate any of these false allegations.’" The judge found that Al Rabiah’s interrogators supported his belief that if he did not confess, "his life would become increasingly miserable."Al Rabiah’s confessions frustrated his interrogators, leading them to use tactics that violated both the Army Field Manual and the Geneva Conventions.
Instead of making his situation easier, Al Rabiah’s confessions made it worse. The judge writes that once Al Rabiah’s interrogators decided his confessions were implausible, they "became increasingly frustrated … [A]s a result, Al Rabiah’s interrogators began using abusive techniques that violated the Army Field Manual and the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War."
The first of those techniques, writes the judge, included "threats of rendition to places where Al Rabiah would either be tortured and/or would never be found [15]"—a violation of the Army Field Manual’s prohibition on "threatening or implying physical or mental torture."
To reinforce those threats, Kollar-Kotelly writes, Al Rabiah’s interrogators put him in the "frequent flier program," which the judge describes elsewhere in her opinion as a technique that "prevented a detainee … from resting due to frequent cell movements." Kollar-Kotelly writes that this technique, like threats of torture, violated [17] the Army Field Manual and the Geneva Conventions. Indeed, the judge highlights the fact that the Army Field Manual states that such techniques "can induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear."
Kollar-Kotelly writes that Al Rabiah’s lead interrogator "was disciplined for making similar threats during the same period [18]" toward another detainee—one of the ones who was an alleged eyewitness against Al Rabiah, in fact.Al Rabiah was made to believe that he needed to confess in order to go home.
Later in the opinion, Kollar-Kotelly writes that "the evidence in the record suggests that Al Rabiah repeated these confessions in the false belief that it would allow him to return to Kuwait." Al Rabiah didn’t come to that conclusion by accident alone. According to the judge, "there is substantial evidence in the record that Al Rabiah was led to believe that he needed to confess something in order to be eligible to be returned to Kuwait."The judge’s rebuke.
Kollar-Kotelly writes that Al Rabiah’s interrogators repeatedly concluded that his confessions were not believable, and she chides the government for using those confessions as the basis for justifying his continued detention at Guantanamo.
"Far from providing the Court with credible and reliable evidence as the basis for Al Rabiah’s continuous detention," she writes, "the Government asks the Court to simply accept the same confessions that the Government’s own interrogators did not credit."
"If there exists a basis for Al Rabiah’s indefinite detention, it most certainly has not been presented to this Court. Al Rabiah’s petition for habeas corpus is GRANTED."

September 14, 2009

This letter, from Dr David Nicholl and Dr Guido Gebauer, was published by The Guardian, September 10, 2009

Revelations that the CIA used doctors extensively while subjecting "war on terror" detainees to torture (CIA doctors may have experimented on prisoners, 3 September) should act as a wake-up call for the international medical community.
In 2006 I, along with over 260 other physicians, reported in the Lancet the abuses that were occurring in Guantánamo as a result of force-feeding prisoners at the camp. Among other things, prisoners had feeding pipes forced into nasal passages, a practice condemned by Amnesty. Despite this, several Guantánamo doctors were later awarded medals "for inspiring leadership and exemplary performance".
In 2007 myself and numerous other medical health professionals accused the American Medical Association (AMA) of being complicit in this abuse by failing to take action against an AMA doctor involved in such unethical behaviour.
To date no doctor has been investigated, still less struck off, for misconduct in the "war on terror". The current international medical ethical guidelines, which were developed as a direct consequence of the Nuremberg trials, are not worth the paper they are written on unless and until bodies such as the AMA boot the torturers out of their organisations.
Dr David Nicholl
Department of neurology, City hospital, Birmingham
• As a forensic psychologist I can identify the interrogation techniques used on the order of the then government of the US as a direct application of well-known animal experimentation techniques based on aversive conditioning. The fact that medical doctors and psychologists monitored these techniques and studied their effectivity certainly means that they were engaged in human experimentation. All evidence suggests that criminal human experimentation was and probably still is common practice in detention places such as Guantánamo Bay.
Dr Guido Gebauer

This editorial, by Clara Gutteridge, was published by The Guardian, September 11, 2009

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, today admitted that MI6 had referred "a case" to the attorney general, involving complicity in torture by one of its agents operating abroad. In a letter to the shadow foreign secretary, Miliband reveals little else, except that the torture happened in an undisclosed foreign country; and unlike the tranche of recent cases where MI5 agents have been accused of complicity in torture, the victim in this case was not a UK national, or a UK resident.
There are many instances of individuals known to have been held in US secret prisons where it would have been a grave dereliction of duty for the British intelligence services not to have been involved in questioning the prisoners.
One such example is Abu Zubayda, accused of being an al-Qaida facilitator, arranging travel for would-be jihadists from the UK, among other countries, to attend training camps in Afghanistan. We also know that Abu Zubaydah was tortured by the US – he was waterboarded 83 times – and that during his interrogation, he implicated people who have turned out to be innocent. He was saying what he thought his torturers wanted to hear. And herein lies the question: were UK agents involved in the interrogation of people such as Abu Zubaydah – in principle, they should have been – and if they were, what did they do about his torture?
My bet is that they were involved, and that they did nothing about the torture, and that information about their activities is starting to leak out as things start to open up in the US with the various inquiries into torture and abuse getting under way across the Atlantic. Just as the US military attempted to blame the systematic abuse at Abu Ghraib on a few "bad apples" acting beyond their orders, the British government appears to be trying to ringfence the rising tide of evidence of its complicity in torture abroad.
To refer an individual agent for investigation by the attorney general conveniently places the blame squarely on the shoulders of a subordinate, and keeps people higher up the chain, including government ministers, out of the picture.
If there is one thing we should have learned from the various official reports and documents that have been released since Obama took office, it is that the abuse that has taken place in the name of "counter-terror" in the past eight years was anything but the actions of a few rogue agents. Rather, in the US at least, the torture was institutionalised. We now know that techniques such as almost drowning people, slamming their heads against walls and staging mock executions were operational norms in US prisons abroad. We also know that the torture programme was systematic, ordered from the top, and that it involved professionals – doctors, psychologists and lawyers.
Against such a cultural backdrop – one that legitimised and bureaucratised torture – it is looking increasingly untenable that British government ministers were unaware of what was going on, or that UK agents colluding in this programme were acting beyond orders.
Thus, as the government has tried to do with the MI5 agent who was involved in interrogating Binyam Mohamed in Pakistan, this recent referral is likely just a last-ditch attempt by the those in command to avoid justice. It is about time the leaders of our country stopped attempting to scapegoat a few unfortunate field agents and started to answer some questions about exactly how the Britain became the sort of country that is involved in torture.

September 13, 2009

This article, by Richard Norton-Taylor and Ian Cobain, was published by The Guardian, September 11, 2009

Fresh questions were raised tonight about the behaviour of British officials towards terror suspects by the disclosure that MI6 had referred one of its officers to the attorney general over allegations of complicity in torture.
The unprecedented move was disclosed in a letter from David Miliband, the foreign secretary, to his Conservative shadow, William Hague. He said MI6 had acted on its own initiative, "unprompted by any accusation against MI6 or the individual concerned".
The Metropolitan police specialist crime branch said Lady Scotland, the attorney general, had asked it to investigate "the conditions under which a non-Briton was held" and the "potential involvement of British personnel".
Officials were reluctant to say anything more about the case other than it was "unrelated" to that of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who says he was tortured and ill-treated in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco and Guantánamo Bay.
The police are separately investigating allegations of what the high court has called "possible criminal wrongdoing" by an MI5 officer involved in Mohamed's secret interrogation.
Miliband said the government could not comment further on the MI6 case "to avoid prejudice and to protect the individuals involved".
Officials told the Guardian that the circumstances surrounding the MI6 case had never been referred to in public. But Whitehall sources said they came to the notice of MI6 lawyers as concerns about the activities of both MI5 and MI6 were being raised by the high court, MPs, and the media. The court heard growing evidence of Britain's involvement in the interrogation of detainees and CIA flights transferring them to secret destinations .
There was speculation among human rights groups that MI6 was prompted to take action as a result of evidence that will emerge in the US inquiry into the CIA's interrogation of terror suspects.
Sir John Scarlett, the head of MI6, told the BBC last month that there no torture and "no complicity in torture" by the Secret Intelligence Service.
Miliband said in his letter, published yesterday on the Foreign Office website, that the government "wholeheartedly condemned torture". He added: "We will not condone it. Neither will we ever ask others to do it on our behalf. This is not mere rhetoric but a principled stance consistent with our unequivocal commitment to human rights. We are fortunate to have the best security and intelligence services and armed forces in the world."
Miliband was responding to a letter Hague wrote to Gordon Brown last month in light of a report by parliament's joint committee on human rights. The committee said the government could no longer get away with repeating standard denials of complicity by the security and intelligence agencies.
Hague asked the government to "clarify as a matter of urgency whether you intend to instruct the attorney general to consider ... allegations of UK complicity in the light of the joint committee report, which documents allegations of UK complicity in torture in respect of detainees held in Pakistan, Egypt, and Guantánamo Bay, and in the case of Uzbekistan, raises concerns about the receipt of information which may have been obtained through torture".
Hague said later: "It is very important that any such allegations are thoroughly investigated. Torture or complicity in torture is unacceptable, immoral and counter-productive".
Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, called for a full judicial inquiry into the British authorities' possible complicity in torture. "Given the gravity and number of allegations of UK complicity in torture, separate limited police investigations alone are inadequate," he said.
Tim Hancock, Amnesty International's UK campaigns director said: "If the UK authorities are serious about their responsibilities to combat torture, we need a full, impartial and independent investigation into all allegations that UK personnel have colluded with torturers."
Shami Chakrabarti, director of campaign group Liberty, said: "Criminal investigations into individual officers don't reveal what ministers knew or authorised … Only an independent judicial inquiry can get to the bottom of this rotten business."
According to Westminster's intelligence and security committee, by early 2005, MI5, MI6 and military intelligence officers took part in more than 100 such sessions in Afghanistan, and MI5 and MI6 officers had been involved in a similar number at Guantánamo Bay. There had been about 2,000 such interrogations in Iraq involving MI5, MI6, military intelligence and civilians.

This ... white paper, published August 31, 2009, after the new release of the May 2004 CIA Inspector General's report, shows that the extent to which American doctors and psychologists violated human rights and betrayed the ethical standards of their professions by designing, implementing, and legitimizing a worldwide torture program is worse than previously known.
A team of PHR doctors authored the white paper, which details how the CIA relied on medical expertise to rationalize and carry out abusive and unlawful interrogations. It also refers to aggregate collection of data on detainees’ reaction to interrogation methods. Physicians for Human Rights is concerned that this data collection and analysis may amount to human experimentation and calls for more investigation on this point. If confirmed, the development of a research protocol to assess and refine the use of the waterboard or other techniques would likely constitute a new, previously unknown category of ethical violations committed by CIA physicians and psychologists. (click here to read original report)

IntroductionThe version of the 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report released on August 24, 2009 provides greater detail on the central role that health professionals played in the CIA’s torture program and reveals a level of ethical misconduct that had not previously come to light.
The report confirms that the CIA inflicted torture on detainees interrogated while in US custody as part of the agency’s counterterrorism activities and exposes additional interrogation techniques that had not yet been reported. It also demonstrates that health professionals were involved at every stage in the development, implementation and legitimization of this torture program.
The doctors and psychologists who laid the foundation upon which attorneys rationalized an illegal program of torture also actively participated in abusive and illegal interrogations, thus betraying the ethical standards of their professions by contributing to physical and mental suffering and anguish. The very premise of health professional involvement in abusive interrogations — that they have a role in safeguarding detainees — is an unconscionable affront to the profession of medicine.
The Inspector General’s report also reveals that medical professionals were directed to meticulously monitor the waterboarding of detainees to try to improve the technique’s effectiveness, essentially using the detainees as human subjects, a practice that approaches unlawful experimentation.
Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has prepared the following analysis of the Inspector General’s report, building on the 2007 report by PHR and Human Rights First (HRF), Leave No Marks, which assessed interrogation techniques reported up to that time, which have now been confirmed by the Inspector General’s report. This paper provides an introductory summary of techniques newly described in the Inspector General’s report and then offers a more detailed medical analysis of those techniques. The paper then reviews the various ways health professionals were complicit in enabling the torture regime.Summary of Newly Detailed Techniques
The Inspector General’s report describes several forms of abuse not previously reported that CIA interrogators and contractors implemented, and that from a medical and legal perspective constitute torture. These include:

Mock executions and threatening detainees by brandishing handguns and power drills;

Threatening the detainee with harm to his family members including sexual assault of female family members, and murder of detainee’s children; and

Physical abuse including the application of pressure to the arteries on the sides of a detainee’s neck resulting in near loss of consciousness, and tackling or hard takedowns.

These methods have significant harmful physical and mental health consequences.
The report provides new details about previously reported forms of abuse referred to as “enhanced interrogation techniques”. The harmful health consequences of these forms of torture and abuse have previously been described by PHR, including in the reports Break Them Down, Leave No Marks and Broken Laws, Broken Lives.” (1)
The Inspector General’s report clearly questions the efficacy, ethics and legality of these as well as the previously mentioned “enhanced interrogation techniques”. The report also confirms the theory of a “slippery slope” in interrogation settings, namely that torture by its very nature escalates in the severity and frequency of its use beyond the approved techniques.
Medical Analysis of the Interrogation Techniques Described in the Inspector General’s Report
The adverse physical and mental health effects of stripping (forced nudity), isolation, white noise or loud music, continuous light or darkness (sensory deprivation), temperature manipulation, stress positions, sleep deprivation, attention slap, abdominal slap, stress positions and waterboarding have been previously described in the Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First report Leave No Marks. The following medical analysis focuses on techniques not previously reviewed by PHR.
As with the techniques previously analyzed, it is important to understand two key points. First, while the techniques are evaluated individually, these techniques were designed to be used in combination in a way that enhanced pain and stress.
Second, to comprehend the severity of the effects of these techniques, it is essential to consider the context of their use. In terms of both long and short term psychological effect, there is no meaningful equivalence between waterboarding when used as part of survival training of service men who have volunteered and consented to the procedure and who know that they are in an environment where they trust the mock interrogator to protect their safety and may stop the procedure at any time, and waterboarding of a high value detainee in a black site where the detainee is in actual fear for his life and safety. As the Inspector General’s report indicates:

“One of the psychologist/interrogators acknowledged that the Agency’s use of the [waterboarding] technique differed from that used in SERE training and explained that the Agency’s technique is different because it is ‘for real’ and is more poignant and convincing.” (2)

Analysis of New Approved Techniques Revealed in Inspector General’s Report
The additional approved techniques listed in the Inspector General’s report and not previously analyzed by PHR include shaving, hooding, restricted diet, prolonged diapering, “walling” and confinement boxes.
As with the previously reviewed techniques, while these techniques can have harmful physical as well as mental health effects, their chief objective is to produce psychological impact, and their chief risk is prolonged mental pain and suffering.1. Forced shaving
Forced shaving of the head and beard was alleged by two of the fourteen detainees interviewed by the ICRC for its 2007 report.

Mr. Ramzi Bin-al-Shib alleged that, in his eighth place of detention, first his head was shaved and then some days later his beard was also shaved off. He was particularly distressed by the fact that the people who shaved him allegedly deliberately left some spots and spaces in order to make him look and feel particularly undignified and abused. (3)

In 2007, PHR physicians examined a former US detainee, who reported:

“When they finished hitting me... they shaved my hair. The only hair I had was in the middle. This was only to humiliate me.” (4)

Medical Analysis: Forced shaving obviously carries little risk of physical harm, and is chiefly designed to inflict psychological harm by means of humiliation, both personal and religious. Forced shaving was part of a campaign to sever the sense of self derived from religious belief, and was often accompanied by forced removal of religious articles.
In addition to the violation of cultural and religious taboos, forced shaving constitutes an intrusion into the personal space and bodily integrity of the person, infringing on autonomy and self-control. The combined effects of this type of treatment in combination with other techniques have been associated with long-lasting psychological injury such as posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression. 2. Hooding
Detainees were blindfolded or hooded to instill in them a sense of fear, disorientation and dependency on their captors.
According to the February 2004 report of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on treatment of detainees in Iraq:

Hooding [was] used to prevent people from seeing and to disorient them, and also to prevent them from breathing freely. One, or sometimes two bags, sometimes with an elastic blindfold over the eyes which, when slipped down, further impeded proper breathing. Hooding was sometimes used in conjunction with beatings thus increasing anxiety as to when blows would came. The practice of hooding also allowed the interrogators to remain anonymous and thus to act with impunity. Hooding could last for periods from a few hours to up to 2 to 4 consecutive days, during which hoods were lifted only for drinking, eating or going to the toilets.(5)

PHR reported in Broken Laws, Broken Lives that according to former detainees medically evaluated by PHR, hooding was used both during transportation and during interrogation.
Medical Analysis: When not used in transport, hooding is a form of sensory deprivation aimed at causing dislocation and confusion. Research shows that prolonged sensory deprivation can result in depression, depersonalization and psychosis. According to the ICRC report, hooding, and other observed sensory deprivation techniques resulted in

3. dietary Manipulation
Detainees were deprived of solid food for periods ranging from days to months. Mr. Abu Zubaydah alleged that for a period of two to three weeks during his initial period of interrogation, he was kept sitting on a chair constantly and only provided with liquid Ensure (a nutrient formula) and water. Mr. Binal-Shib reported that he went three to four weeks without solid food, and was only provided with Ensure and water. In addition, six other high-value detainees reported being deprived of solid food for periods ranging from days to weeks. (7)Medical Analysis: While physical risks of a liquid diet are minimal as long as appropriate calories and nutrients are provided, the intent of dietary manipulation is to inflict psychological distress by infringing on the detainee’s sense of autonomy and self control and increasing discomfort and a sense of helplessness and dependency. While the risk of death or debilitation may be minimal, the effects on concentration and mood may be substantial.4. Prolonged diapering
Detainees were placed in diapers and denied access to a toilet for prolonged periods of time. According to the ICRC Report, high value detainees in CIA custody were placed in diapers for prolonged periods for transport.

The detainee would be made to wear a diaper and dressed in a tracksuit... The journey times obviously varied considerably and ranged from one hour to over twenty-four to thirty hours. The detainee was not allowed to go to the toilet and if necessary was obliged to urinate or defecate in the diaper.(8)

he ICRC report states that one of the detainees, Mr. Bin Attash, was compelled to wear a diaper for a prolonged period:

[H]e commented that on several occasions the diaper was not replaced so he had to urinate and defecate on himself while shackled in the prolonged stress standing position. Indeed, in addition to Mr. Bin Attash, three other detainees specified that they had to defecate and urinate on themselves and remain standing in their own body fluids.(9)

Medical Analysis: Prolonged diapering especially when combined with leaving the subject in a diaper soiled with urine and feces can result in both physical and psychological harm. Prolonged exposure of the skin can result in skin infection, skin breakdown and ulceration and urinary tract infections. In addition, the placement of a normally continent adult in a diaper will likely lead to efforts by the adult to resist urination or defecation, which in turn will likely result in bowel cramping and bladder spasm.
Access to toilet is a universally recognized minimum standard for prisoners and detainees. In spite of the physical risks, the chief aim of this technique is to cause psychological stress through humiliation, induced dependency, loss of autonomy, and regression to an infantile state.(10) Like all such techniques, especially when combined with others of the ‘DDD’ type (debility-dependency-dread), these are cumulative and lead to short and long-term debilitation. At Guantánamo, the standard operating procedures included requiring the detainee to ask the interrogator for toilet paper, food, and religious articles. Here, the torturers go even further, returning the detainee to pre-toilet-training levels. When combined with a liquid diet, the experiences of regression, humiliation, and dependency are magnified.5. Walling
Six of the fourteen high-value detainees interviewed by the ICRC reported being placed in a neck collar or roll and then slammed against a wall. According to the CIA guidelines, slamming against a wall could be used twenty or thirty times consecutively.
During the walling technique, the detainee is pulled forward and then quickly and firmly pushed into a flexible false wall so that his shoulder blades hit the wall. His head and neck are supported with a rolled towel to prevent whiplash. (11)
Although the guidelines require that the wall be a specially constructed flexible one, some detainees alleged that they were also slammed against concrete wall using the collar during transport.(12)
Mr. Bin Attash alleged that during interrogation in Afghanistan:

“on a daily basis during the first two weeks a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room.” (13)

Medical Analysis: Walling results in blunt trauma and acceleration/deceleration type injuries. Blunt trauma can result in bruises and bleeding from ruptured blood vessels. Studies have observed persistence of musculoskeletal pain cause by blunt trauma even a decade after the trauma has occurred. In rare cases, repeated beating can cause damage to muscle tissue and muscle breakdown resulting in release of muscle enzymes resulting in a life-threatening condition called rhabdomyolisis. In addition, walling can expose the subject to risk of whiplash type injury to the neck and spine. (14)
Psychological stress, which is the primary aim of the procedure, is achieved by use of surprise, generating a startle response, an experience of shock, loss of control and helplessness. Also, rage is engendered which turns to further humiliation, insofar as the detainee cannot fight back.6. Confinement in a Box
Confinement in a box is a rather extreme version of a stress position with the added potential for claustrophobia.
According to the ICRC report, Abu Zubaydah alleged that in Afghanistan in 2002 he was held in boxes designed to constrain his movement. Mr. Zubaydah stated:

“As it was not high enough even to sit upright, I had to crouch down. It was very difficult because of my wounds. The stress on my legs held in this position meant that my wounds both in the leg and the stomach became very painful.” (15)

He went on to say that a cover was placed over the boxes while he was inside making it hot and difficult to breathe.Medical Analysis: Confinement in a box is an extreme example of stress positions, with the added effect of decreased access to fresh air, temperature changes, light deprivation and isolation. Stress positions have been associated with permanent joint and ligamentous injury, and both acute and prolonged musculoskeletal pain. In addition, use of stress positions following blunt trauma carries the risk of deep vein thrombosis (clotting) and associated and potentially fatal pulmonary emboli. This is not a theoretical risk, as at least two detainees in US Custody in Afghanistan died of pulmonary emboli due to use of stress positions in interrogation settings.(16)
Confinement in a box was devised as a direct appropriation of Martin Seligman’s research on “learned helplessness.” In fact, on at least two occasions, Seligman presented his learned helplessness research to CIA contract interrogators referred to in the Inspector General’s report. In Seligman’s experiment, dogs were confined to boxes in which they discovered that familiar mechanisms of control would no longer have an effect in avoiding pain.
Like their canine counterparts, humans subjected to similar confinement develop psychomotor and cognitive responses that would be clinically diagnosed as depression and, in certain cases, PTSD. Such symptoms include apathy, helplessness, hopelessness, foreshortened sense of future, and a (in this case justified) lack of belief in their ability to affect their future prospects. In Seligman’s experiments, these symptoms were severe and lasting, in that a change to an environment where the dogs could have an effect did not change the symptoms of learned helplessness. (From the DoD’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) and SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) Programs.)Unapproved and Improvised Techniques
The Inspector General’s Report contains numerous accounts of interrogation techniques that were not approved for use, including threats with a gun and power drill, threats of harm to loved ones, and choking and carotid artery pressure.
Threats of harm to the detainee or loved ones are reviewed in Leave No Marks. The risks of choking and carotid artery pressure should be self-evident. They include risk of choking death and stroke, as well as high risk of psychological trauma from a near-death experience. Near-death experiences are highly correlated with the risk of developing post traumatic stress disorder.Role of Health Professionals in Torture
Health professionals played central roles in developing, implementing and providing justification for torture.
Health professionals in the Office of Medical Services and psychologist contractors (17) engaged in designing and monitoring harmful interrogation techniques.(18) Such medical participation in torture is a clear violation of medical ethics. Furthermore, health professionals were complicit in selecting and then rationalizing these abusive methods whose safety and efficacy in eliciting accurate information have no valid basis in science. The severe physical and psychological pain and enduring harms associated with these techniques make it evident that they constitute torture and ill treatment. Monitoring of interrogation techniques by medical professionals to determine their effectiveness uses detainees as human subjects without their consent, and thus also approaches unlawful experimentation.(19)
According to CIA guidelines, health professionals including a psychologist and doctor were required to be present during the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.(20) The required presence of health professionals did not make these methods safer, and in fact only served to sanitize their use and enable the abuse to escalate, thereby placing health professionals in the untenable position of calibrating harm rather than serving as protectors and healers as required by their ethical oath.
The report also documents the role of health professionals in participating in initial psychological and physical assessments of detainees in an intake process closely linked to the process of interrogation. By requirement, all interrogations were monitored in real-time by health professionals. Previous reports, including the ICRC report, document allegations that a medical device called a pulse oximeter (a device to measure oxygen saturation in a subject’s blood) was placed on the finger of a detainee to monitor the effectiveness of his respiration during waterboarding.(21) In this way, medical professionals were used to calibrate physical and mental pain and suffering.
Not only were health professionals involved in designing and monitoring the CIA interrogation program, they also played an indirect but essential role in the legal justifications for the program prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). The OLC was asked by the CIA whether certain techniques constituted torture under 18 USC §2340 by causing “severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” Since the OLC lawyers had no direct experience of the techniques, they necessarily relied instead on the judgment of health professionals. Yet, in a striking example of bootstrapping, they turned for advice about the pain caused by the techniques to the very health professionals who were implementing them. (22)
In essence, the lawyers were asked if the techniques constituted torture and they replied to the CIA that they only did so if the CIA Office of Medical Services (OMS) informed them that the techniques reached the defined standard of pain. The OMS health professionals obligingly passed on through CIA channels their opinion that the pain was not in fact severe
In an egregious example of this circular process, one OLC memo concludes that waterboarding is not torture because “however frightening the experience may be, OMS personnel have informed us that the waterboard technique is not physically painful.” Scores of similar references to OMS medical judgments about pain and the safeguarding effects of medical monitoring appear throughout the memos. Although OMS did express some concern about some techniques, those objections were limited. Without the cooperation of health professionals in making these assessments, the OLC memos could not have reached the conclusions they did and could not have so easily justified torture.
The intent of the CIA interrogation program was to cause severe psychological distress.(23) Despite citation of unnamed experts who reportedly concluded that these techniques were unlikely to cause significant harm, the notion that these abusive techniques can be used safely has no basis in medical science and is not supported by an extensive peer-reviewed literature.(24) From a medical, scientific and common sense perspective the idea that such abusive and inhumane techniques can be safely deployed is unsupportable. The techniques authorized and deployed have long been documented to cause significant and long lasting psychological pain and suffering including posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety and major depression.(25) In fact, a recent study demonstrates that abusive techniques employed during captivity which emphasized psychological torture over physical injury, such as psychological manipulation, forms of deprivation, humiliation and stress positions, cause as much mental pain and traumatic stress as does torture designed to inflict physical injury. (26)
The use of these abusive methods violates international human rights standards. The likely illegality of the program was known to the agency and debated within the agency. Those advocating for the use of abusive techniques such as waterboarding should have known that the US had prosecuted these same techniques as torture. Health professionals who were involved in its justification, design and implementation should have known that professional ethics prohibit health professionals from complicity in such harmful acts against prisoners or detainees. It is precisely to avoid such complicity that health professionals have recourse to professional codes of ethics, as well as international standards of medical conduct. Familiarity with these codes – not to mention basic human decency – should preclude such conduct, making clear to health professionals and government institutions both its essentially unethical nature and illegal status under international law.
Not only should interrogators be subject to an investigation of alleged criminal conduct. Health professionals who were involved in this program should be the subject to independent investigation for both criminal and unprofessional conduct. Professionals who have violated professional ethics or the law must be held accountable through criminal prosecution, loss of license and professional society membership, where appropriate. Conclusion
The newly released version of the May 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report on Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities reveals the use of a number of previously undescribed techniques including:

Forced Shaving

Hooding

Dietary Manipulation

Prolonged Diapering

Walling

Confinement in a box

These techniques used alone or in combination may meet the definition of torture under US and international law. Legality aside, they are associated with high risk of physical and psychological harm, including harm that is enduring, in those subjected to these techniques. They also represent clear violations of well-established medical ethics governing the behavior of health professionals.
The report also confirms use of previously reported techniques, covered in the PHR and Human Rights First report Leave No Marks, such as isolation, forced nudity, stress positions, temperature manipulation, waterboarding, and other techniques which were used in ways that violated the torture statute and international law.
The Inspector General’s report confirms much of what had been reported about the essential role played by health professionals in designing, deploying, monitoring and legitimizing the program of torture, but also raises disturbing new questions which require further investigation. The possibility that health professionals monitored techniques to assess and improve their effectiveness, constituting possible unethical human experimentation, urgently needs to be thoroughly investigated.
PHR has long called for full investigation and remedies including accountability for war crimes, and reparation such as compensation, medical care and psycho-social services. PHR also calls for health professionals who have violated ethical standards or the law to be held accountable through criminal prosecution, loss of license and loss of professional society membership where appropriate.

Footnotes:

1)Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact. 2008. Available at: http://brokenlives.info/?page_id=69 ; Break Them Down: Systematic Use of Psychological Torture by US Forces. 2005. Available at: http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/report-2005may.html ; Leave No Marks: Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and the Risk of Criminality 2007. Available at: http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/ report-2007-08-02.html.2) Inspector General’s report p. 37
3) ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen “High Value Detainees” in CIA Custody. International Committee of the Red Cross. February 2007. Available at http://www.nybooks.com/icrc-report.pdf.
4. Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact. 2008. Available at: http://brokenlives.info/?page_id=69. The former detainee’s history was deemed credible by examining physicians. He suffers from symptoms consistent with posttraumatic stress disorder.
5. ICRC Report.
6. ICRC Report.
7. ICRC Report.
8. ICRC Report.
9. ICRC Report.
10. “The purpose of all coercive techniques is to induce psychological regression in the subject by bringing a superior outside force to bear on his will to resist. Regression is basically a loss of autonomy, a reversion to an earlier behavioral level. As the subject regresses, his learned personality traits fall away in reverse chronological order...” (Human Resource Exploitation Manual, CIA, 1983)
11. CIA guidelines as reproduced in Inspector General’s report, p. 15
12. ICRC Report.
13. ICRC Report.
14. Leave No Marks
15. ICRC Report.
16. Allen S. Rich J. Bux R. Farbenblum B. Berns M. Rubenstein L. Deaths of Detainees in the Custody of US Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2002 to 2005. Medscape General Medicine: 2006;8(4):46.
17. From the DoD’s Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) and SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) Programs.
18. “Several months earlier, in late 2001, CIA had tasked an independent contractor psychologist, who had [redacted] experience in the US Air Forces’ Survival, Evasion, resistance, and Escape (SERE) training program, to research and write a paper on Al-Qa’ida’s resistance to interrogation techniques. This psychologist collaborated with a Department of Defense (DoD) psychologist who had [redacted] SERE experience in the US Air Force and DoD to produce the paper “Recognizing and Developing Countermeasures to Al-Qa’ida’s Resistance to Interrogation Techniques: A Resistance Training Perspective.” Subsequently, the two psychologists developed a list of new and more aggressive EIT’s [enhanced interrogation techniques] that they recommended for use in interrogations.” Inspector General’s Report p. 13. “CIA’s OTS obtained data on the use of the proposed EIT’s and their potential long-term psychological effects on detainees. OTS input was based in part on information solicited from a number of psychologist and knowledgeable academics in the area of psychopathology” and “OTS also solicited input from DoD/Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA) regarding techniques used in SERE training and any subsequent psychological effects on students.” Inspector General’s Report p. 14.
19. The Office of Medical Services guidelines for waterboarding state “A rigid guide to the medically approved use of the waterboard is not possible, as safety will depend on how the water is applied and the specific response each time it is used. The following general guidelines are based on very limited knowledge, drawn from very few subjects whose experience and response was quite varied.” They add “NOTE: In order to best inform future medical judgments and recommendations, it is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented: how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was applied, if a seal was achieved, if the naso- or oropharynx was filled, what sort of volume was expelled, how long was the break between applications, and how the subject looked between each treatment.”
20. “In 2004, when Daniel B. Levin, then the acting assistant attorney general in the counsel’s office, sent a letter to the CIA reauthorizing waterboarding, he dictated the terms: “no more than two sessions of two hours each, per day, with both a doctor and a psychologist in attendance.” Report Shows Tight CIA Control on Interrogations. Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane. New York Times, August 26, 2009. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/26/ us/26prison.html?_r=1&hpw
21. ICRC report. Note that the use of a pulse oximeter, and the requirement that an emergency tracheostomy kit be kept ready is even more evidence that the procedure is intentionally harmful, risky and potentially lethal.
22. In certain cases the very same JPRA psychologists who designed the torture and implemented the techniques, and, who, as private contractors, profited from the operation, also provided the research that justified the techniques: “You have informed us that your on-site psychologists, who have extensive experience with the use of the waterboard in Navy training, have not encountered any significant long-term mental health consequences from its use. Your on-site psychologists have also indicated that JPRA has likewise not reported any significant mental health consequences from the use of the waterboard.”
23. CIA Inspector General’s Report. Appendix F. “Captured terrorists turned over to the CIA for interrogation may be subjected to a wide range of legally sanctioned techniques, all of which are also used on US military personnel in SERE training programs. These are designed to psychologically ‘dislocate’ the detainee, maximize his feelings of vulnerability and helplessness, and reduce or eliminate his will to resist our efforts to obtain critical intelligence.” In addition, the sanction techniques include so-called “Standard measures” or those deemed to be without physical or substantial psychological pressure and so-called “Enhanced measures,” or those deemed to cause physical or psychological pressure beyond “Standard measures.” (p. 1). “In all instances, the goal of these techniques is psychological impact...” and are “designed to induce shock, surprise and/or humiliation.” (p. 2).
24. See Leave No Marks and Broken Laws, Broken Lives. Although these reports were published in 2007 and 2008 respectively, they summarized scientific literature that was well established in 2001. In a bizarre justification for the safety of the techniques, the OLC report states, “You have also reviewed the relevant literature and found no empirical data on the effect of these techniques with the exception of sleep-deprivation.” OLC August 1, 2002, p. 6. Yet, there is a large body of research on the effects of these and similar techniques, much of it supported by the CIA. See for example The Search for the Manchurian Candidate (c) 1979 by John Marks. Published by Times Books.
25. PHR and HRF previously reported on the harmful effects of many of these techniques in their report Leave No Marks: Enhanced Interrogation and the Risk of Criminality.
26. BasogluM.etal.Torturevs.OtherCruel,InhumanorDegradingTreatment: Is the Distinction Real or Apparent? Archives Gen. Psychiatry 277 (2007).